From Renting Computer Time to Building With AI: A Technology Journey I Never Planned
There was a time when simply getting access to a computer was difficult for me.
Today, I can sit in front of a computer, describe an idea to an artificial intelligence system, work through a problem with it, test what we create, and build something that only a few years ago I would probably have assumed required an entire development team.
Sometimes I think about how strange that is.
Because my story with technology did not begin with AI.
It did not begin with cybersecurity.
It did not begin with a university degree.
And it certainly did not begin with owning the latest computer.
It began in the Philippines, with curiosity.
Learning Before I Had My Own Computer
I became fascinated with computers when I was young.
In the early 1990s, computers were very different from what we have today. I learned about 386 and 486 machines, BASIC, DOS, Windows 3.1, hardware, and the fundamentals of how computers worked.
But there was a problem.
I didn’t have my own computer.
So I learned however I could.
I read books. I spent time in computer rental shops where you paid for access by the hour. I used resources that were available to me, including books and occasional computer access at the Goethe-Institut in Manila.
When friends or neighbors were working with computers, I helped.
I learned by doing.
During high school, that interest eventually led to me becoming president of our computer club.
At the time, I did not know where any of it would lead.
I just knew that I wanted to understand these machines.
Looking back, I think that curiosity mattered more than I realized.
When Education Had to Wait
After high school, I attended college, but only for one semester.
My family did not have much money, and continuing school was not realistically the most important thing at that point in my life.
I needed to work.
For a long time, that affected how I saw myself professionally.
I continued learning technology, but there was always this awareness that I did not have the degree that I believed people working for major organizations were supposed to have.
So I kept learning another way.
Through books.
Through work.
Through troubleshooting.
Through colleagues.
Through mistakes.
Through figuring things out because something needed to work.
That became my education for many years.
My First Computer Came From My First IT Salary
In 2004, I moved to Qatar.
I began working in IT support at Hamad Medical Corporation.
One of the things I still remember about that period is what I did with my first salary.
I bought my first personal computer.
After years of learning through borrowed access, rental computers, books, and whatever resources were available to me, I finally owned one.
That may sound like a small thing today.
It wasn’t small to me.
It represented something I had wanted since I was young.
And by then, technology was no longer only an interest.
It had become my career.
Then Came Al Jazeera
In 2006, I joined Al Jazeera International, now Al Jazeera English, as an IT Support Engineer.
My work involved supporting the technology behind a modern television newsroom — desktops, laptops, workstations, newsroom systems, editing systems, applications, and the technology people depended on to get news to air.
Then, in 2007, my career took another turn.
I moved into Satellite Newsgathering.
I became an SNG Engineer.
Suddenly, technology was no longer only something happening inside an office or a server room.
It could be happening in the field, under pressure, with a satellite connection, broadcast equipment, communications systems, deadlines, journalists, producers, engineers, and an audience waiting somewhere on the other side of the world.
I remained in SNG field operations until 2016.
Those years taught me things that are difficult to learn from a textbook.
When equipment fails in the field, you troubleshoot.
When circumstances change, you adapt.
When something has to work, you find the problem and solve it.
And when you do not know something, you learn.
I was fortunate to work with experienced people who taught me a tremendous amount.
I also became one of the people my SNG colleagues would often turn to for general IT and technology questions because of my previous IT background.
Without realizing it at the time, different parts of my career were starting to connect.
IT.
Networking.
Communications.
Broadcast engineering.
Troubleshooting.
Field operations.
They were not separate careers.
They were different ways of solving technical problems.
Going Back for the Education I Had Left Behind
There was still something unfinished.
Education.
Years after leaving college, I went back.
Eventually, I earned my degree in Computer Networks and Cybersecurity.
Going back to school later in life was very different from attending college immediately after high school.
This time, the concepts were connected to things I had already seen in the real world.
Networks were not abstract.
Security was not abstract.
Systems were not abstract.
I had spent years working with technology and troubleshooting it.
Now I was adding formal academic knowledge to the experience I had accumulated along the way.
For me, earning that degree meant more than adding another line to a résumé.
It closed a circle that had remained open since I left college to work.
And Then Technology Changed Again
Just when I thought I had seen several generations of technological change, artificial intelligence arrived in a form that ordinary people could actually use.
I became fascinated again.
Not because AI could answer questions.
That was interesting, but it was not the part that changed things for me.
What changed things was realizing that I could interact with technology differently.
I could describe what I wanted to create.
I could discuss a problem.
I could ask why something was failing.
I could examine code even though I had never spent my career as a software developer.
I could move from an idea to an experiment much faster than I could before.
That eventually became important when I started building CyberGuardia Technology & Media Services.
Building CyberGuardia
When I started CyberGuardia.io, I needed a website.
But I didn’t want only a website.
I wanted something useful.
I wanted customers to be able to learn about services, request support, schedule appointments, have accounts, see relevant service information, and interact with the business through a system that made sense.
As I continued developing it, the project became more ambitious.
As the site grew, I began developing a Business Center and Client Portal with capabilities involving customer accounts, appointments, service requests, memberships, prepaid balances, invoices, payment status, online payment workflows, administrative functions, and other tools I use to operate the business.
I won’t describe the architecture or everything happening behind the scenes.
Some things should stay behind the scenes.
But one principle has guided a lot of my decisions:
I don’t want to install another plugin or buy another subscription every time I need the website to do something.
A Little of What Happens Behind the Scenes
From the outside, a customer may simply see a website, a login, an appointment page, an invoice, or a request form.
Behind the scenes, there is more going on.
The system has to know who the customer is and what information belongs to that account.
It has to distinguish between what a client should be able to see and what should remain administrative.
Appointments need to be associated with the right customer.
Support requests need to be tracked.
Membership information and prepaid service balances need to be reflected correctly.
Invoices and payment status need to stay connected to the right records.
Different parts of the system have to exchange information without forcing the client to enter the same details repeatedly.
There also has to be logic around what happens when something changes.
If an appointment is created, updated, or completed, what should the system reflect?
If a payment is made, what information should change?
If a customer uses prepaid service time, how should the remaining balance be represented?
If a membership changes, which parts of the client experience should respond?
And if something fails, how do I make sure it fails safely rather than creating confusion for the customer?
Those are the types of questions I spend time thinking about.
There are also the less visible parts: authentication, access control, privacy considerations, integration between different functions, administrative workflows, notifications, error handling, and maintaining a consistent experience across the site.
I do not try to automate absolutely everything.
Some processes should still involve human judgment.
But where automation can remove repetitive work, reduce errors, or make the experience easier for the customer, I want the system to handle more of that work in the background.
That is why I no longer think of CyberGuardia.io as simply a collection of web pages.
It is becoming a small business platform.
Avoiding the Frankenstein Website
Anyone who has worked extensively with WordPress probably understands how easily this can happen.
You need one feature, so you install a plugin.
Then another.
Then another.
One handles appointments.
One handles customers.
Another handles billing.
Another creates a dashboard.
Another manages memberships.
Another connects two other plugins that don’t quite work together.
Soon you have a website composed of many different products developed by different companies, each with its own settings, updates, licenses, dependencies, security considerations, and subscription fees.
I sometimes call that a Frankenstein website.
There is nothing inherently wrong with using plugins.
CyberGuardia uses third-party technology where it makes sense.
I am not trying to reinvent every wheel.
But I have become much more deliberate about what I add.
If a specialized service provides something valuable, I will use it.
If I can create a function specifically around the way my own business operates without adding another unnecessary dependency or recurring fee, I now have the ability to explore doing that too.
AI has made that much more practical.
And financially, that matters.
Many business website features are available through premium plugins or separate software services. Individually, the costs may seem small, but monthly subscriptions and annual licenses can accumulate quickly.
My goal is not to eliminate every expense.
Hosting costs money.
Domains cost money.
Payment processing costs money.
Some specialized services are worth paying for.
The goal is simply to avoid paying extra for functionality I can reasonably build into the platform myself.
That gives me lower recurring costs, fewer dependencies, and more control over how CyberGuardia operates.
I Am Also Learning How to Build a Business
There is another part of this story that I think is important to say clearly.
I do not come from a background in entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, or building companies.
Technology is familiar territory for me.
Business is not.
I am still learning how to define services, set prices, explain value, market a business, reach customers, understand what people actually need, and turn technical ability into something sustainable.
I am learning while doing.
And AI has become part of that learning process too.
I use it to research ideas, think through business models, challenge assumptions, improve the way I communicate, explore marketing approaches, organize my thinking, and understand areas that are still new to me.
In some ways, AI is helping me bridge another gap.
Not only the gap between understanding technology and creating software.
But also the gap between being a technical person and learning how to become a business owner.
I Don’t Know Yet Whether It Will Succeed
I think this is also worth saying openly.
I do not know whether CyberGuardia will become the successful business I hope it will be.
That is still uncertain.
There are no guarantees.
I am still learning.
I am still experimenting.
I am still figuring out what works and what does not.
But AI has changed how I feel about taking the risk.
It gives me a way to research unfamiliar areas, test assumptions, explore possibilities, improve how I communicate, and work through problems that might otherwise feel too large or too unfamiliar to tackle alone.
It does not remove the uncertainty.
It does not guarantee success.
It does not make the difficult decisions for me.
But it makes the unknown feel more manageable.
And because of that, I feel more confident trying something I might once have talked myself out of attempting.
Maybe CyberGuardia will become exactly what I hope it can be.
Maybe it will evolve into something different.
Either way, I would rather learn by trying than spend years wondering what might have happened if I had been willing to take the chance.
For me, that may be one of the most meaningful things AI has provided.
Not certainty.
Not a guarantee.
Confidence to try.
“So AI Built It?”
This is where I think the conversation about AI sometimes becomes too simplistic.
You could look at what I have built and say:
“AI built your website.”
I don’t think that is accurate.
AI has been an enormously important part of the process.
I use tools such as ChatGPT and Codex to help me research, plan, troubleshoot, develop, review, and improve things.
I also experiment with local and open-weight AI systems because I want to understand this technology beyond simply using one chatbot.
But AI still needs direction.
Someone has to decide what problem is being solved.
Someone has to recognize when the proposed solution does not make sense.
Someone has to test it.
Someone has to ask what happens when something goes wrong.
Someone has to think about the user.
Someone has to think about security.
Someone has to decide whether another feature actually makes the system better or simply makes it more complicated.
AI didn’t replace my IT experience.
It extended it.
Years of troubleshooting computers, supporting users, working with networks, operating technical systems under pressure, studying cybersecurity, and learning how people actually interact with technology all influence the decisions I make today.
AI gave me access to capabilities I didn’t previously have.
But the experience tells me what questions to ask.
I Am Still Not a Traditional Software Developer
I think it is important to say that openly too.
I did not spend twenty years writing software.
I would never want to misrepresent that.
My career was in IT, networking, technical support, broadcast engineering, satellite newsgathering, cybersecurity, and technical operations.
AI did not magically turn that history into twenty years of software engineering experience.
What it did was something different.
It lowered a barrier.
Before, I might have had an idea and thought:
“I understand what this system should do, but I don’t know how to build it.”
Today, the conversation is different.
It becomes:
“I understand what this system should do. Now let’s figure out how I can build it.”
That is a profound change.
Starting Again at 48
At 48, I found myself starting again.
Technology has changed enormously since the days when I was learning DOS and Windows 3.1.
Sometimes the technology industry makes people feel that if they did not start using something when they were twenty-two, they have somehow missed their opportunity.
I don’t believe that anymore.
I have watched technology reinvent itself too many times.
The tools change.
The fundamentals don’t change as quickly.
Curiosity matters.
Problem solving matters.
Knowing how to learn matters.
Understanding people matters.
Experience matters.
And perhaps most importantly, being willing to become a beginner again matters.
AI made me a beginner again in some ways.
I like that.
And entrepreneurship has done the same.
I am learning areas of business that are unfamiliar to me.
Marketing.
Sales.
Pricing.
Positioning.
Customer experience.
Running the operation itself.
I don’t pretend to have mastered them.
I am learning them the same way I learned so many other things in my life:
by asking questions, trying, making mistakes, adjusting, and continuing.
There Is Another Part of This Story
English is not my first language.
I grew up in the Philippines.
For much of my life, I have sometimes hesitated before writing publicly because I wondered whether my English was good enough, whether I would choose the right words, or whether I would communicate what I actually meant.
AI has helped me with that too.
It helps me organize what I want to say.
It helps me improve the language.
It helps me turn thoughts that may be scattered in my head into something another person can follow.
But the experiences are still mine.
The memories are mine.
The opinions are mine.
The decisions are mine.
The story is mine.
AI helps me tell it.
That distinction matters to me.
From Renting Computer Time to Building My Own Platform
Every once in a while, I think about the teenager in the Philippines who had to pay by the hour to use a computer.
He couldn’t have imagined any of this.
He probably would not have understood what artificial intelligence meant in the way we understand it today.
He certainly would not have imagined sitting in front of his own computers decades later, collaborating with an AI system to build a digital platform for a business he created himself.
And he probably would not have imagined trying to build a business without really knowing yet whether it would succeed.
But I think he would recognize one thing immediately.
The curiosity.
That part hasn’t changed.
I still want to know:
How does this work?
Why doesn’t this work?
Can I make it better?
Can I learn this too?
And perhaps the question that has followed me through almost every stage of my life:
What happens if I try?
That question took me from books and rented computers in the Philippines, to IT in Qatar, to an international newsroom, to satellite newsgathering around the world, back to university, into cybersecurity, and eventually to building CyberGuardia.
I do not know yet where CyberGuardia will take me.
And maybe that is the point.
AI has not given me certainty.
It has given me another set of tools, another way to learn, and a little more confidence to take a chance on something I believe could become meaningful.
AI didn’t give me this story.
It helped me realize that the story isn’t finished yet.